


I Don't Know This Place

by tilda



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [2]
Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4215906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tilda/pseuds/tilda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s loud and he’s not supposed to be here. It’s a school night but Daisy had said ‘Just one, Grim, promise. Show our faces and home in bed for pumpkins?’</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Know This Place

**Author's Note:**

> i did a prompt meme a million years ago and received - in the space of about five minutes - four separate prompts for nick/harry, 'don't fucking touch me', and THAT was an insight into this fandom, let me tell you. so i wrote half of this, didn't know what to do with it, then my computer broke and i forgot. then i remembered it and here it is.
> 
> it's set in the summer of 2014, when harry went to a gq/warner party at shoreditch house, and nick and daisy hung out at some launch thing, and i seem to remember nick being spotted in shoreditch some time that night and i thought, what if...

It’s loud and he’s not supposed to be here. It’s a school night but Daisy had said ‘Just one, Grim, promise. Show our faces and home in bed for pumpkins?’

‘For pumpkins’ was midnight. In truth it hadn’t even been Daisy’s 5k smile that had done it, but a sneaking piece of knowledge, a suspicion, a tiny sliver of hope that Harry might be there. He didn’t know why that was a lure, given their current state of non-communication, but it was. So here he was, in Shoreditch House, taken over for the night by GQ and Warner. It’s like a village fete for London media, only instead of bunting and free platters of prawn sandwiches cut into triangles, it’s a fairy-lit swimming pool and Piper Heidsieck and mini foie gras hamburgers. All gone by the time he and Daze have got there though. Never mind. He gets them a couple of beers while Daisy scans the crowd.

‘Ooh, Amber’s here. Sick.’

And she’s off. She’s in the middle of promo for her book and is out every night, taking every opportunity for a picture. Nick gets it, he’s done it himself tons of times. He takes a swig of beer. He needs to go home. He moves through the crowd not looking for Harry. He stops to talk to a few people, says hello to others. It’s weird when everyone’s as high profile as this. It’s one of those times when the world he lives in day to day turns out to be just like he’d imagined when he was a kid, and all famous people do actually know each other. People say hi to Nick who he only remembers from the telly, and vice versa.

He sees Harry when he gets to the roof. His face is uplit by the pool-lights, talking quietly to someone Nick doesn’t recognise. Nick makes his way around the pool, wondering just how stupid what he’s doing is. They’ve not texted in months.

It wasn’t some natural fading-off. Before, when Harry went on tour, they used to keep up the stream of contact, managed to maintain the fuckbuddies delusion for a good while.

This time, there was three weeks of meeting to fuck, of desperate, wordless sex and white-of-the-eye orgasms, of sucking, devouring kisses before one of them had to go to work, of clinging together in their sleep hard enough to bruise.

And there had been one terrible night when Harry had said ‘I love you’ and Nick had clamped his hand over Harry’s mouth. He should have kept it there. ‘I’m sorry,’ Harry had rambled on. ‘I can’t help it. I know I’m not supposed to. I’m sorry. I know we can’t -’, and Nick couldn’t take it anymore and he’d hissed, ‘Shut up.’ He’d covered Harry’s mouth in a biting kiss. He broke off and said, ‘Shut up shut up shut up,’ seven or nine or twenty-four times, he didn’t know. He sounded mad. He felt mad. He was mad.

At the end of the three weeks Harry said ‘Don’t text me,’ and Nick had said ‘Yeah, ok.’ And they’d stuck to it. It was hard and shockingly easy at the same time. The itch of longing was still there, but there was no scratching, no relief, but no making it worse either.

It feels like the only diet he’s managed in his life, but he’s breaking it badly tonight. It’s not his fault. Daisy had insisted, he tells himself. He can’t stop their paths from crossing (actually he can, he knows he can, but Harry in the same city, in the same area, in the same building, at the same party, is too much. Nick is only a man.)

Harry’s expression doesn’t change when he spots Nick. He watches as Nick rounds the corner of the pool, his conversation buddy forgotten. She’s an attractive woman in her forties, possibly in A&R, Nick guesses. She looks around too and immediately seems to get it and drifts off after a touch to Harry’s elbow. Nick is glad she’s going, but hates that people who don’t even know them just know. Harry is unreadable as he approaches.

‘Hey,’ says Nick.

‘Hey.’

Harry’s mouth seems to be trying to make the smallest aperture in the world.

 _I’m sorry_. Nick thinks of saying. _I couldn’t help it_.

‘How are you?’

‘Good.’

Harry’s said two words and they’ve both been bitten-off vocal jerks. It’s awful. It’s already awful, but Nick is still masochistic enough to think it’s worth it. Harry’s in full party popstar mode, something Nick hasn’t experienced in the flesh in a while. He’d hidden himself in ugly jumpers and second-hand-car-dealer coats last time Nick had seen him, or he’d been completely naked. This cologned up, skinny-jeaned, chains-swinging, bare-chested vision is Nick’s undoing. He knows it’s fake, it’s bullshit, but he can’t help himself.

‘Cool,’ he says, leaning forward, reaching to touch Harry’s elbow in an unconscious echo of the A&R woman.

‘Don’t fucking touch me.’

Harry’s voice is low, no-one around them can hear, and they’d never be able to tell what he’s just said from the pleasantly neutral expression he’s maintaining. Nick retracts his hand as if he’s touched something hot. ‘I didn’t mean anything.’

‘Yeah. Exactly.’

Harry’s gaze bores into him.

‘Oh. I. Sorry.’

Nick’s never had a relationship, which means he’s never broken up with someone, which means he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. He knows he’s doing something wrong. Not that there’s anything to do wrong because he hasn’t broken up with anyone. Because he’s never had a relationship. Jesus, he’s tired. He really does need to go home.

As he’s standing there thinking all this, Harry’s face seems to collapse inwards subtly, like a building that’s been dynamited but not yet fallen. He drops his head. ‘I can’t do it, Nick,’ comes from somewhere underneath the hat. ‘Tell me how to get through this.’

‘I don’t know.’ Nick feels useless. ‘Christ, I want to touch you.’

Harry laughs and looks up at him. To anyone watching it would look like Nick’s made a startlingly good joke. ‘That’s a big help, Grimshaw.’

‘I’ve never done this before, Haz,’ Nick says. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be the experienced adult. You picked the wrong bloke.’

‘Guys!’

Nick’s drink is nearly jolted out of his hand. It’s Jordan Rizzle Kicks. He grabs Harry into a headlock, rips his hat off, plants a kiss in the middle of his greasy curls and shoves the hat back on his head. ‘Hazza! Haven’t seen you in ages!’ Harry adjusts his hat in some elaborate way so it’s sitting back on his head properly and he and Nick catch each others’ eye and suddenly grin. They’ve just been saved. Jordan is irresistible, a ray of human sunshine. ‘How are you, man?’

‘I’m good,’ Harry says, matching Jordan’s grin. ‘Mostly in the States now.’

‘Gonna be a movie star, eh?’

They start talking about LA and Nick takes his chance to leave.

Daze is in the middle of a scrum of blokes, looking in her element, and Nick just signals over their heads that he’s going. She waves and turns back to the guy on her right who is failing to hide the hard-on in his eyes.

As the cab zips through Old Street towards Kings Cross, Nick feels like he’s escaping the scene of a failed crime, that he had to leave the loot before the police arrived, but he’s somehow got away with it. His phone buzzes briefly against his palm. He turns the screen towards him and sees it lit up with a message from Harry.

_I didn’t pick the wrong bloke. I’ve never been so sure about anyone in my life._

Nick tips his head back against the seat and squeezes his eyes shut.

 _You arsehole_ , he thinks. _You fucking massive, awful, terrible, lovely arsehole_.

He looks out of the window and tries to will his home nearer, will tomorrow nearer, will next week nearer, _next year_ , because then he might be a week or a year nearer to being over this.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr [here](http://tilda.tumblr.com/post/101944508116/i-did-a-prompt-meme-a-million-years-ago-the-same).


End file.
